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The Russian Federation is by far the largest country of the world and spans both Europe and Asia. Russia shares borders with the following countries (in counter-clockwise order): Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. Its extensive coastline stretches from the Arctic Ocean to the North Pacific Ocean, as well as to inland seas such as the Baltic Sea, Black Sea and Caspian Sea. As the primary successor of the Soviet Union, Russia is still an influential country, in particular in the Commonwealth of Independent States, comprised of many other ex-Soviet Union states.
Provisional list, see Talk:Russia for more. Central Russia[?]:
The Russian Federation stretches across much of the north of the supercontinent Eurasia and as such knows a great variety of landscapes and climates. Most of the landscape consists of vast plains, both in the European part and the Asian part that is largely known as Siberia. These plains are predominantly steppe to the south and heavily forested to the north, with tundra along the northern coast. Mountain ranges are found along the southern borders, such as the Caucasus (containing Mount Elbrus, Russia's highest point at 5,633 m) and the Altai, and in the eastern parts, such as the Verkhoyansk Range or the volcanoes on Kamchatka. Notable are the more central Ural Mountains that form the primary divide between Europe and Asia.
Russia has an extensive coastline of over 37,000 km along the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, as well as inland seas such as the Baltic, Black and Caspian Seas. Smaller bodies of water are part of the oceans; the Barents Sea, White Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea[?] and East Siberian Sea[?] are part of the Arctic, whereas the Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan belong to the Pacific Ocean. Major islands found in them include Novaya Zemlya, the Franz-Josef Land[?], the New Siberian Islands[?], Wrangel[?], the Kurile Islands and Sakhalin.
Many great rivers flow across the plains into the oceans and seas. In Europe these are the Volga, Don, Kama, Oka and the Northern Dvina[?], while several other rivers originate in Russia but flow into other countries, such as the Dniepr[?] and the Western Dvina. In Asia are found the Ob, Irtysh, Yenisei, Angara, Lena and Amur rivers. Major lakes include Lake Baikal, Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega[?].
A decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia is still struggling to establish a modern market economy and achieve strong economic growth. Russia saw its economy contract for five years, as the executive and legislature dithered over the implementation of reforms and Russia's industrial base faced a serious decline.
Russia achieved a slight recovery in 1997. The 1998 financial crisis culminated in the August depreciation of the ruble, a debt default by the government, and a sharp deterioration in living standards for most of the population. The economy subsequently has rebounded, growing by an average of more than 6% annually in 1999-2001 on the back of higher oil prices and a weak ruble.
This recovery, along with a renewed government effort in 2000 and 2001 to advance lagging structural reforms, have raised business and investor confidence over Russia's prospects in its second decade of transition. Russia remains heavily dependent on exports of commodities, particularly oil, natural gas, metals, and timber, which account for over 80% of exports, leaving the country vulnerable to swings in world prices.
Russia is fairly sparsely populated due to its enormous size; population is densest in the European part of Russia, in the Ural Mountains area, and in the south-eastern part of Siberia. The Russian Federation is home to many different ethnic groups and indigenous peoples. Over 80% of the population is ethnically Russian, the remainder includes Bashkirs[?], Chechens, Chuvashes[?], Cossacks, Evenkis, Germans, Ingushes, Inuit, Jews, Kalmyks, Karelians, Koreans, Mordvins[?], Ossetians, Taimyrs[?], Tatars, Tuvans, Yakuts and still others.
The Russian language is the only official state language, but the individual republics[?] have often made their native language co-official next to Russian. The Russian Orthodox Church is the dominant Christian religion in the Federation, other religions include Islam, various Protestant faiths, Roman Catholicism, Buddhism and Judaism.
See also: Demographic crisis of Russia
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